


Lone Wolf

by provocative_envy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Horcruxes, Rowena Ravenclaw's Diadem, Time Loop, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:01:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24561232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/provocative_envy/pseuds/provocative_envy
Summary: The long-forgotten, blood-stained Albanian forest that Helena Ravenclaw directs Tom to is dark, and damp, and dreary.It has secrets.He can feel them.
Relationships: Rowena Ravenclaw/Tom Riddle
Comments: 13
Kudos: 87





	Lone Wolf

**Author's Note:**

> this was written for my [ficraiser](https://provocative-envy.tumblr.com/post/620017038370504704/hi-yall-for-the-first-time-in-checks-notes) over on tumblr; this particular recipient asked to remain anonymous, but i'd still like to thank them for the donation they made to [the george floyd memorial fund](https://www.gofundme.com/f/georgefloyd). i hope you enjoy this, anon!
> 
> xoxo

* * *

The long-forgotten, blood-stained Albanian forest that Helena Ravenclaw directs Tom to is dark, and damp, and dreary.

It has secrets.

He can feel them.

* * *

“ _Accio_ diadem,” he says firmly, clearly.

Carefully.

He holds up his wand, the burning, white-yellow tip of it creating an eerie sort of halo around the trees. There’s an answering noise—a telltale rustle of leaves and displaced air—but an unease is growing swampy and thick in his gut. Planting roots. Unfurling its limbs. The heft and swell of the surrounding shadows gnaws at his periphery, at the worm-churned earth beneath his feet, and his throat bobs, uncomfortably dry, when he tries to swallow.

A glimmer of silver appears in the gloom, whistling closer—whining, almost, like the air-raid sirens in London used to.

Emergency.

Alert.

Attack in progress.

Tom drops his wand and raises his hand and makes the incalculably grave mistake of blinking.

* * *

Time.

Time doesn’t bend, not exactly.

It _twists_.

* * *

He wakes up cold, which isn’t particularly unusual—he’s always cold now; something about hollow magical cores and poor circulation and slicing one’s soul into perfectly immortal ribbons, no doubt—but he also wakes up with the distinct impression that he’s being _watched_ , with the distinct impression that he isn’t _alone_ , and that—

That is quite unusual.

* * *

“Rowena Ravenclaw,” he blurts out—like a schoolboy, like an imbecile, like a _virgin_. His mouth snaps shut. The room he’s in is large and sprawling, well-lit, filled with candles and delicate brass instruments and books. A lot of books. A sea of books. It smells like incense and tallow, like worn parchment and charred wood and cider spices, a bit like flowers, too—herbaceous, loamy, sticky-sweet.

The young woman standing next to the bed is strikingly beautiful, memorably, recognizably so, tall and willowy, dark-haired and bronze-skinned, an undeniable symphony of sharp angles and even sharper eyes.

She’s smiling, fingers clasped in front of her, but not like she means it.

“Tom Marvolo Riddle,” she says, amusement coloring her voice. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

* * *

Tom’s wand is either a thousand years or several thousand miles away, depending on his mood.

“You can’t _keep_ me here,” he snarls, stalking across the room—the _solar,_ that’s what Ravenclaw’s been calling it; like it isn’t a prison, like it isn’t a jail cell, like it isn’t an increasingly irrelevant step up, step down, step sideways from the dungeons he grew up in—and pounding his fist against the table, rattling her inkpot. “Not forever.”

The glance she levels him with is wry and exasperated and very nearly pitying. “How long do you think that is?”

“How long do I think _what_ is?”

“Forever.”

“Time is an abstract concept.”

“Oh?” She gives him a deliberately incredulous once-over, gaze lingering— _sliding,_ dragging, furnace-hot, honey-heavy. Infectious. Disarming. “There’s nothing tangible about it to you?”

He grits his teeth. “Time is infinite.”

“Time is _circular_.”

“That’s—”

“Not what you said,” she interrupts coolly, shifting her attention back to the scroll laid out before her, scratching something into the margins with her eagle-feather quill.

He can’t read the runes.

He doesn’t understand them.

* * *

“If you’re planning to torture me—”

“I’m not.”

“If you’re planning to _kill_ me—”

“I’m not.”

Tom rakes his fingers through his hair, scowling mutinously at the weak stream of sunlight flickering through the cloud cover. “Then what _are_ you planning?”

Ravenclaw shrugs, infuriatingly casual. “Same as you, I imagine.”

He stares at her.

She stares right back.

* * *

Days turn into weeks turn into months—except they don’t.

Not really.

It’s late fall, or perhaps it’s early spring, or perhaps it’s the middle of an uncommonly mild winter. The castle is empty. The castle _remains_ empty. Logically, Tom knows he must be sleeping, must be eating, must be shaving, cleaning his teeth, changing his clothes. He isn’t tired. He isn’t hungry. His face is smooth, his mouth is fresh, his clothing is crisply laundered and immaculately pressed and . . . identical to what he was wearing the night he went to fetch the diadem.

It’s a strange and immutably fearsome realization.

* * *

“Am I already dead?”

Ravenclaw actually stops walking. “Excuse me?”

“Am I,” Tom repeats, nostrils flaring, ice in his veins, “already dead? Is this purgatory?”

Her lips—soft, pillowy, entrancing—part on a quiet, disbelieving little exhale. “Are you a Christian?”

“Quit deflecting.”

“Quit asking stupid questions.”

He scrubs at his jaw with the heel of his palm, bones grinding, muscles working. “This isn’t real,” he says flatly. Stubbornly. Desperately. “None of this is real. So, if I’m not _dead_ —”

“You’re not.”

“—then is this some kind of, I don’t know, some kind of sentient Pensieve memory? How is it so interactive?”

A laugh tumbles out of her, unexpectedly sweet, unexpectedly genuine, unexpectedly intimate, like he’s in on the joke for once, and the sound of it at pulls at him, at his chest, ripping, yanking, like a fish hook caught on the inside of his sternum _;_ it’s a staggeringly familiar sensation, jarring and visceral and oddly reminiscent of—

* * *

Oh.

* * *

Pain.

Agony.

Triumph.

* * *

_Oh._

* * *

“How many?” Tom whispers, leaning forward, elbows propped on the table. A nearby candle sputters, wax dripping down the side, and his pulse is rabbiting against the base of his throat, heartbeat pounding at his eardrums. “How many did you make?”

“One.”

“Why?”

“I was curious.”

“You never told—there were never any rumors—”

“I was curious,” Rowena says again, more impatiently. “It was an experiment.”

He snorts. “Of course it was. Just an accident, yeah?” He lowers his voice. Taunting. Mocking. “That’s what I said, too.”

She tilts her chin, straightens her shoulders, breasts pushed up, round and full, straining against the laces crisscrossing the front of her dress. “I have no reason to lie.”

“I’ve made my own,” he reminds her. “I know what this means. What it represents.” He sweeps an expansive arm out, gesturing to the room—to the _solar_ , to the only part of this place imbued with any degree of personality, with any degree of permanence. “I know _you_. What you’re afraid of. What you want.”

She meets his eyes. Dark. Liquid. Practically a mirror.

His breath hitches.

* * *

Kissing Rowena Ravenclaw is like coming down with a fever.

Dizzying.

Scorching.

Unpredictable.

A thrashing, roiling frenzy of heat and pleasure and _magic_.

* * *

Tom wakes up shivering, gasping, naked and wild-eyed, to itchy, sweat-soaked cotton sheets and the frankly depressing interior of the room he rented in Tirana.

His clothes are missing. His wand is on the bedside table. There are bruises ringing his wrists, bitten into his chest, his shoulders, and shallow, tingling scratches all across his upper back.

His chest aches.

He's . . . lighter.

* * *

The long-forgotten, blood-stained Albanian forest that Helena Ravenclaw directs Tom to is dark, and damp, and dreary.

It has secrets.

He can feel them.

* * *

“ _Accio_ —”

He pauses, cocking his head, abandoning the rest of the spell. The wind is bristling through the trees, carrying along with it the mingled scents of rot and pine, the sounds of hooting birds and buzzing insects and misting rain and faint, distant, barely-there footsteps.

Footsteps.

He tightens his grip on his wand.

_Footsteps_.

“Rowena?”

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> [come join me in hell](http://www.provocative-envy.tumblr.com)


End file.
